The Roland Sound Canvas VA (SCVA) Thread

[mdiemer]

Sometimes you can get stuff to work as an FX instrument when it won't otherwise. I forget exactly how to do this, but I remember that you have to change a setting. If I figure it out I'll let you know. 

Edit: Here's my old thread in the old Sonar forum:

http://forum.cakewalk.com/SOLVED-Studio-Instruments-How-Do-I-Use-m3744948.aspx

Edited May 5, 2019 by mdiemer

[Mánibranðr Studios]

On 5/5/2019 at 11:43 PM, Victor Peters said:

Hi,

I just downloaded and installed Sound Canvas VA and I'm trying to get it to work and play some of my GS MIDI files.

I was able to play MIDI files throught the Sound Canvas VA in Reaper (https://www.reaper.fm/), but I'm unable to do so in Cakewalk by BandLab version 2019.03 (build 20l, 64 bit). I can't find a way to direct the output of the (MIDI) tracks to the Sound Canvas VA VST plugin. I've had a hardware Sound Canvas (SC-8850) in the past and was able to play the MIDI files through that unit, but it seams that Cakewalk doesn't recognize the Sound Canvas VA as a VST-instrument that can handle MIDI data.

Any help to get this working before the trail expires would be very appreciated.

Use LoopMIDI to create a custom MIDI port and SAVI Host to load SCVA. Then on Cakewalk, add the MIDI port that you created as a MIDI device.

[Drew Burns]

I am using the latest Cakewalk (2019.05) and Sound Canvas VA. I can change to other bank instruments in the Sound Canvas VA control panel, but they are not saved. How do I change to other bank variations like Slow Violin 041 version 008 (CC00)?

[Logan Hale]

Just got the trail version from roland and no matter what I try it just installs the file containing the parameter and .dll files no actual program running windows 10 

[fulop.nandor]

Dear Members,

I have some problem with SCVA in CbB, please, do read it below:

Symptome: in case of Roland Cloud Sound Canvas VA  version 1.1.6 (hereafter: SVCA) VSTi in Cakewalk by Bandlab version 2020.11, build 099,  the MIDI Pitch Bend Sensitivity XXX  (i.e. RPN 0 XXX) messages do not modify the sensitivity range,  but set the MIDI Channel Volume according to the value of MSB part of XXX, instead.

My question: what settings are needed for the proper operation of "Pitch Bend Sensitivity" MIDI messages in case of SVCA VSTi in CbB?

The story and the circumstances: At the end of December of 2020, I purchased an  SVCA software synth via Roland Cloud Manager. After the payment was completed, I was able to initiate the installation of SVCA from Roland Could Manager by a single click into my PC (CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 @ 3.2GHz; RAM: 8 GB) having Microsoft Windows 10 Home version 2004 operating system. The installation seemed to be taken place without any problem. I set the path to SVCA files for the Cakewalk, the Cakewalk recognized it as a VSTi successfully,  so I immediately started learning about the SVCA. I was able to play different MIDI files through the SVCA with quite good sounding, so I was really satisfied with the first results.
Until I met that problem related to setting the pitch bend range, which one I mentioned in the Symptome above.

The reproduction of the symptome: I created a simple test file, see the enclosed file "svca-test-pitch-bend-range.mid". It contains only 6 consecutive C5 notes in the first MIDI channel. Then I have inserted MIDI Pitch Bend Sensitivity XXX messages just before the note message, where the values denoted by XXX were 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048 and 3072 in order to specify 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and 24 semitones as limits of the expected bending range. 

When the Output was set to Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth in the Cakewalk, the playing back of this file resulted the six consecutive C5 notes, with bending up to 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and 24 semitones at their ends, according to the MIDI Pitch Bend Sensitivity (RPN 0) messages, i.e. everything seemed to be OK.

Reproduction of the problem: when I changed Output to the SOUND Canvas VA from the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth,  the playing back the test file resulted almost no audible sound during its about first half - and only a very slowly intensifying but quite still silent sound during the second half, while the bending ranges were limited to only 2 semitones, for all the notes.
Even, in window of SCVA, the Volume Slider of Channel 1 jumped suddenly to value 1 (i.e. almost its leftmost position) as the playing back reached the first note, then changed at the begin of each next note to 2, 4, 8 and 16, and when the last note were reached and exceeded, the Volume Slider got its final position: 24,  as it can be seen in the enclosed picture "svca-volume-level-changed-instead-of-pitch-bend-range-setting.jpg".
In this time, during this reproduction of the problem, I used the SCVA by the following way for the playing back the test file :
1) I inserted the SCVA from the main menu by clicking on the items: Insert > Soft Synth > Sound Canvas VA.
2) I put tickmarks to the checkboxes:
All Synth Audio Outputs: Stereo,
Synth Property Page,
Synth Rack View
in the dialog box titled as Insert Soft Synth Option, then I clicked on button "OK".
3) I selected Track 1, clicked to "O" (Output) and clicked on the menuitem 2-SOUND Canvas VA in the list.

Then I inserted Control 7-Volume 100 MIDI messages between the Pitch Bend Sensitivity XXX MIDI messages and Note C5 MIDI messages. During the playing back of the test file modified by these -volume setting messages,  the volume of the resulted sound were recovered to 100, but the bending range still remained to be limited to 2 semitones. Or, in other words, the default pitch bending range, which is 2 semitones only, were applied since the beginning to the end, despite the presence of Pitch Bend Sensitivity MIDI messages having different range values.

So I concluded roughly this: the Pitch Bend Sensitivity XXX MIDI messages were interpreted as Control 7-Volume MSB-of-XXX messages in my SCVA-CbB configuration.

Thanks for any recommendation to overcome this strange behaviour, in advance! (Sorry for my poor English, if I were not so clear.)

scva-pitch-band-range-test.mid

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

On 1/16/2019 at 8:34 PM, Freyja Grimaude-Valens said:

I think this is a fantastic GM synth and I wish that this can be made easily available as an add-on for CWbBL. Perhaps updated to be capable of more than one output per instance?

Platinum came with the Roland Groove Synth, which is sort of similar.

[mdiemer]

32 minutes ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

Platinum came with the Roland Groove Synth, which is sort of similar.

Unfortunately the Groove synth, which I have via sonar 8.5, crashes my system, just like TTS-1 does. I thought about getting the RSC, but opted instead for the Air Expand synth. What I really wish I could use is NI's Bandstand, which I have, but will not authorize any longer, since NI has abandoned it.  It's annoying that GM/GS midi sets, which used to be essentially free (my old Ensoniq soundcard had an excellent built-in one, which is what I used for years in the old days); are now scarce and expensive. Last I knew, RSC was about 150.00. that's overpriced for just a midi set. Unfortunately this is the current state of things. 

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

1 minute ago, mdiemer said:

Unfortunately the Groove synth, which I have via sonar 8.5, crashes my system, just like TTS-1 does. I thought about getting the RSC, but opted instead for the Air Expand synth. What I really wish I could use is NI's Bandstand, which I have, but will not authorize any longer, since NI has abandoned it.  It's annoying that GM/GS midi sets, which used to be essentially free (my old Ensoniq soundcard had an excellent built-in one, which is what I used for years in the old days); are now scarce and expensive. Last I knew, RSC was about 150.00. that's overpriced for just a midi set. Unfortunately this is the current state of things. 

Did you try the Sonar Platinum one?

[mdiemer]

3 minutes ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

Did you try the Sonar Platinum one?

No, sonar 8.5 was my latest, until Bandlab came along and rescued it from oblivion.

[abacab]

I have an original Roland JV-1080 rack unit with a decent GM playback mode, plus much more! Many of the most well-known Factory presets and Xpansion board sounds of the JV-series were created by Eric Persing of Spectrasonics.

https://www.roland.com/us/products/jv-1080/

Maybe you can locate a used one somewhere. But the Roland subscription is probably cheaper. https://reverb.com/p/roland-jv-1080

[Johnny Tsao]

.

Edited March 12 by Johnny Tsao

[fulop.nandor]

15 hours ago, Johnny Tsao said:

@fulop.nandor

I use Sound Canvas VA in CbB, and there are situations where I cannot change Bend Range through RPN, and it also affects Vloume Level.

However, you can also change Bend Range through Automation. I recorded a video, you can refer to it,I hope it will help you! 🙂

Hi, Johnny, thank you very much for your quick reply, I am going to try it immediately! 

[Brian McClelland]

On 1/8/2021 at 7:07 AM, fulop.nandor said:

Dear Members,

I have some problem with SCVA in CbB, please, do read it below:

Symptome: in case of Roland Cloud Sound Canvas VA  version 1.1.6 (hereafter: SVCA) VSTi in Cakewalk by Bandlab version 2020.11, build 099,  the MIDI Pitch Bend Sensitivity XXX  (i.e. RPN 0 XXX) messages do not modify the sensitivity range,  but set the MIDI Channel Volume according to the value of MSB part of XXX, instead.

My question: what settings are needed for the proper operation of "Pitch Bend Sensitivity" MIDI messages in case of SVCA VSTi in CbB?

The story and the circumstances: At the end of December of 2020, I purchased an  SVCA software synth via Roland Cloud Manager. After the payment was completed, I was able to initiate the installation of SVCA from Roland Could Manager by a single click into my PC (CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 @ 3.2GHz; RAM: 8 GB) having Microsoft Windows 10 Home version 2004 operating system. The installation seemed to be taken place without any problem. I set the path to SVCA files for the Cakewalk, the Cakewalk recognized it as a VSTi successfully,  so I immediately started learning about the SVCA. I was able to play different MIDI files through the SVCA with quite good sounding, so I was really satisfied with the first results.
Until I met that problem related to setting the pitch bend range, which one I mentioned in the Symptome above.

The reproduction of the symptome: I created a simple test file, see the enclosed file "svca-test-pitch-bend-range.mid". It contains only 6 consecutive C5 notes in the first MIDI channel. Then I have inserted MIDI Pitch Bend Sensitivity XXX messages just before the note message, where the values denoted by XXX were 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048 and 3072 in order to specify 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and 24 semitones as limits of the expected bending range. 

When the Output was set to Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth in the Cakewalk, the playing back of this file resulted the six consecutive C5 notes, with bending up to 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and 24 semitones at their ends, according to the MIDI Pitch Bend Sensitivity (RPN 0) messages, i.e. everything seemed to be OK.

Reproduction of the problem: when I changed Output to the SOUND Canvas VA from the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth,  the playing back the test file resulted almost no audible sound during its about first half - and only a very slowly intensifying but quite still silent sound during the second half, while the bending ranges were limited to only 2 semitones, for all the notes.
Even, in window of SCVA, the Volume Slider of Channel 1 jumped suddenly to value 1 (i.e. almost its leftmost position) as the playing back reached the first note, then changed at the begin of each next note to 2, 4, 8 and 16, and when the last note were reached and exceeded, the Volume Slider got its final position: 24,  as it can be seen in the enclosed picture "svca-volume-level-changed-instead-of-pitch-bend-range-setting.jpg".
In this time, during this reproduction of the problem, I used the SCVA by the following way for the playing back the test file :
1) I inserted the SCVA from the main menu by clicking on the items: Insert > Soft Synth > Sound Canvas VA.
2) I put tickmarks to the checkboxes:
All Synth Audio Outputs: Stereo,
Synth Property Page,
Synth Rack View
in the dialog box titled as Insert Soft Synth Option, then I clicked on button "OK".
3) I selected Track 1, clicked to "O" (Output) and clicked on the menuitem 2-SOUND Canvas VA in the list.

Then I inserted Control 7-Volume 100 MIDI messages between the Pitch Bend Sensitivity XXX MIDI messages and Note C5 MIDI messages. During the playing back of the test file modified by these -volume setting messages,  the volume of the resulted sound were recovered to 100, but the bending range still remained to be limited to 2 semitones. Or, in other words, the default pitch bending range, which is 2 semitones only, were applied since the beginning to the end, despite the presence of Pitch Bend Sensitivity MIDI messages having different range values.

So I concluded roughly this: the Pitch Bend Sensitivity XXX MIDI messages were interpreted as Control 7-Volume MSB-of-XXX messages in my SCVA-CbB configuration.

Thanks for any recommendation to overcome this strange behaviour, in advance! (Sorry for my poor English, if I were not so clear.)

scva-pitch-band-range-test.mid 981 B · 2 downloads

Hey, fulop.nandor! Brian from Roland Cloud here. Sorry that you're having difficulty with the pitch bending. If you Contact Us through the link at http://www.rolandcloud.com/support we can submit this to our dev team and get it worked on. Thanks for letting us know.  😊

[Glenn Taylor]

Hello friends, how do I get the instrument bank to change when I select another in the ‘edit’ field?

there’s no cc in the midi file, yet Roland VSC changes back to ‘piano’ which seems to be the default.